The Accelerating Medicines Partnership® in Common Metabolic Diseases brings together researchers from multiple institutions to work towards the goal of better understanding and treatment of common metabolic diseases. Get to know the members of the consortium in our CMDKP Spotlight articles.
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Maria Costanzo (0000-0001-9043-693X) a member of the AMP® CMD Portal Team, is the Creative Lead for the Knowledge Portals at The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Maria’s scientific background
Maria received her B.A. degree in microbiology from the University of Pennsylvania and went on to do Ph.D. work with Janice Pero and Richard Losick at Harvard University. Her project, characterizing alternate RNA polymerase sigma factors in the Bacillus subtilis bacteriophage SPO1, included performing Maxam-Gilbert sequencing and analyzing the resulting sequences with paper and pencil. She did postdoctoral work in the lab of Thomas Fox at Cornell University (where she moved on to Sanger sequencing and the earliest sequence analysis programs, using an Apple IIe computer), studying mitochondrial translational regulation in baker's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
With the completion of the S. cerevisiae genome sequence in 1996, Maria became interested in genomic-scale studies and joined Proteome, Inc. to work on one of the earliest biocuration efforts, the Yeast Proteome Database (YPD). After Proteome, Inc. was acquired by Incyte Genomics and YPD was no longer made freely available to academics, she left Incyte to join the open-access, NHGRI-funded Saccharomyces Genome Database (SGD). She spent more than a dozen years as a Biocuration Scientist for SGD and also worked on genome databases for the pathogenic fungi Candida and Aspergillus. During this time she helped to establish the International Society for Biocuration and organize its first few conferences. In addition to being one of the first biocurators, Maria was also an early telecommuter, working remotely for Beverly, MA-based Proteome Inc. and for Stanford-based SGD while raising her family in Ithaca NY.
When an opportunity arose to work with Noël Burtt and Jason Flannick at the Broad Institute, Maria jumped at the chance to move up the evolutionary tree to human genetics. Starting in 2015 with the newly-launched Type 2 Diabetes Knowledge Portal, she has developed content, documentation, and outreach for the now-numerous portals of the Knowledge Portal Network.
Reflections on AMP-CMD and the CMDKP
Reflecting as she retires at the end of 2024, Maria says "It’s been a remarkable privilege to be a part of AMP CMD. From my close colleagues at the Broad, UCSD, EBI, and the University of Michigan, to AMP CMD collaborators across the world, to all the external scientists who use and contribute to the Knowledge Portals, I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many amazing people. And it’s been incredibly rewarding to see the growth in use of the portals and to know that they are actually helping researchers whose work will benefit human health."
Life outside the lab
In retirement, Maria is looking forward to having more time to spend with her husband, kids, extended family, and friends, learning new things (Italian, piano, and being a better vegetable gardener are on the list!), and ultimately finding ways to continue to make meaningful contributions to the world.
